The Image Of Edessa In Art

10.1163/ej.9789004171749.i-242.53

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Chapter Summary

One of the earliest surviving copies of the Image of Edessa in art can be found at Saint Catherines monastery on Mount Sinai. One of the best-known Mandylion copies in Western Europe is in the cathedral of Laon (north of Rheims), painted onto two pieces of pinewood. The Image of Edessa is also portrayed in the miniatures of a Menologion manuscript in Moscow, copied in 1063 and taken to Russia from the Athonite monastery of Stavronikita. The cult of the Veronica image came to the fore towards the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century. The version of the Images origins contained in Gregory Referendarius sermon linked the cloth to the passion narrative and this aspect was imported into the west, although Gethsemane was replaced by a female called Veronica, none other than the Hemorrhissa whose bloodflow had been cured by simply touching Jesus robe.